"I do / dig Everything Swinging," begins the Credo Jonathan Williams has placed at the outset of [An Ear in Bartram's Tree: Selected Poems 1957–1967, a] marvelous, handsome selection from his earlier, frequently scarce volumes, and indeed this witty, perceptive poet and printer manifests an individual enthusiasm for everything from Stan Musial, swinging his bat in Wrigley Field, in the first poem, to the jazz swinging of Miles Davis and Bud Powell; in between—or beyond—are Catullus, Tolkien, Edith Sitwell, Charles Ives, Mahler, and such living mentors as he names: Pound, Zukofsky, Creeley, Olson, Dahlberg, Buckminster Fuller. (p. 331)

Perhaps the most obviously striking quality in Williams's work, aside from the erudition and bookishness (which are of the delightful, never the pedantic variety), is the extraordinary acuteness of his ear. As a perpetual traveler, largely a hiker in America and England, he has attuned his sensitive powers of listening to...